With some of Ireland’s largest mobile providers set to increase their prices over the coming weeks, Tesco Mobile has pledged to maintain prices at current levels for the next 12 months.

It is estimated that one in seven consumers of mobile and broadband services have switched provider this year in search of a less expensive deal, though market share for service providers is remarkably consistent.

Latest ComReg data shows that Mobile Retail Revenues totalled €446m in Q4 2022, an annual run rate of c.€1.8bn. Mobile Voice subscriptions totalled 5,690,000, an annual increase of 5.9%.

For mobile market share, excluding mobile broadband and machine-to-machine (such as remote thermostats), Tesco Mobile had 7.7% market share in Q4 2022, the same share as at the start of the year.

Tesco Mobile is Ireland’s largest virtual network operator (MVNO), and buys and resells capacity on the Three network. Claimed population coverage is 99% for 4G data and 99.7% for calls and texts.

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The mobile market leader is Vodafone, with 35.2% market share, followed by Three (29.4%) and Eir (21.9%). French-owned Eir was the only operator to increase mobile market share through 2022, gaining 30 basis points.

When standalone mobile broadband and MTM subs are included, Three has the largest market share at 42.8%, an increase of 300 basis points in 2022, followed by Vodafone on 33.6%.

Tesco Mobile has succeeded as an MVNO where others have failed due to close linkages with the retailer’s Clubcard loyalty scheme.

Customers receive double the points when they register their Clubcard to a Tesco Mobile account, and every €5 in Clubcard vouchers gives €15 off the phone bill.